The 1973 Glasgow Review Interview

July 1, 2017Simon Pettet

 [Allen Ginsberg at his 1973 Glasgow Press Conference]

We featured here last week, Allen’s interview in 1973 in Scottish International. Featured today is a companion piece from The Glasgow Review  (drawing from the same press conference).  The piece was initially titled “Of Burns and Watergate” (referring to the two main topics).

Interviewer; What do you think of the present state of the Watergate affair?

AG: Well what the underground both in America and England have been saying for a long time now has become accepted currency in the minds of the above-ground, middle-class media. The specific conceptions that are … Read More

Studs Terkel Interviews Allen Ginsberg, 1976 – part one

May 13, 2017Simon Pettet

[Studs Terkel (1912-2008)]

We’ve already featured the classic 1959 Studs Terkel  WFMT radio interview with Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso in seven sections – here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

We also featured Allen and Philip Glass on Studs Terkel’s show in 1990 – here and here

We’ll be featuring, in the coming weeks, a third, a 1975 session with Allen and William Burroughs

but, first, this weekend, this, (courtesy George Drury and the remarkable trove which is the Studs Terkel Radio Archive) – Allen Ginsberg’s interview … Read More

Expansive Poetics – 84 – Out-take – Nixon’s Paranoia

July 15, 2014admin

[Richard M Nixon (1913-1994)]

So, a quick  “outtake” today, or “digression” (from our recent transcription (from 1981) of Allen, speaking  of the bureaucratic complicity and the institutionalized paranoia of the (Stalinist) Russian police state – “No hope Communism, No hope Capitalism” – He couldn’t help but point out its the American equivalent (America in the ‘Sixties – CREEP (the Committee for the Re-Election of the President), Nixon and Watergate) 

AG: (It’s) just like trying to investigate the CIA now, or the FBI..I mean, you can’t send people to jail! – I mean, they might have killed people, they

… Read More

Kissinger Tapes

February 10, 2009admin

kiss

[Henry Kissinger & Allen Ginsberg 1984. photo: unknown]

This is old news by now, but pleasantly amusing and so quintessential Ginsberg that it was crying out to be our launch story. At Senator Eugene McCarthy‘s suggestion, Allen has called Kissinger in order to arrange a conversation between among others, civil rights activist Ralph Abernathy, then CIA head Richard Helms, pacifist David Dellinger, and even (Richard) Nixon, in order to brainstorm for ways out of the Vietnam war.

2017 update – the original link is no longer working but you can read the article/transcript (from the March … Read More